


What's In A Name?

by Tashlen



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Imperial Officers (Star Wars), Male-Female Friendship, Pain, Random & Short, Secret Identity, Spies & Secret Agents, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 09:34:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12407775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tashlen/pseuds/Tashlen
Summary: A life in Imperial Intelligence is not for the faint of heart or fragile of body.





	What's In A Name?

**Author's Note:**

> Short tales of the agent who would eventually become known as Cipher Nine.

Simulated combat was a frequent training event. Imperial Intelligence used virtual simulations on the young prospects to avoid excessive damage while they were being assessed, and Xandrei had been found to be above average thus far in both efficiency and adaptive learning. Today seemed no different – she suited up in the light armoring preferred for combat in the field, armed herself, and picked up her earpiece and the virtual mask. Her hair, formed of tight shoulder-length ringlets of a deep seal-brown shade that was nearly black, was twisted back into a knot and tucked neatly in upon itself to contain the curls, and she sat on one of the benches, checking her gear and the viciously edged, wide-bladed vibroknife. Her personal defense shield was a weak one; an intentional function to prevent her from learning to rely upon the protection in the field, but she’d never understood why they were required in the virtual sessions. Nothing was -really- going to damage her, so it made no sense to be forced to equip it. But she wore it each time, and didn’t bother to complain.

Rules, protocols, and more rules. It was the way of things in Intelligence.

The instructor pointed at her, and she got up, limbering quickly in the moments before it was her turn in the chamber. The silence in the room always felt suffocating to her senses, but it was effective in teaching her to be as quiet as possible. The expulsions of breath could be surprisingly loud when in combat, and there would certainly be times when she needed to keep knowledge of her presence to a minimum. Most times, if she was honest with herself. If she made it to the level of cipher agent, she would for all intents and purposes become essentially a ghost.

“Goggles on.” The instructor’s order was unusual. Xandrei usually waited to put it on until she was inside the room, and the other student hadn’t even left, yet. But she obeyed her, settling the heavy virtual goggles in place over her eyes. Quick fingers settled the ear pieces into her canals, and the near-silence settled down upon her, a sensation that would only be made more intense by the sound-dampened, padded walls of the room beyond. The sound of the door opening was hushed by the buds in her ears, but she could hear it faintly. The instructor’s impersonal touch guided her towards the door by the elbow, Xandrei’s steps careful and quick.

She felt the hand leave her elbow and knew she had been left in the center of the room. A strong, acrid scent mingled with an astringent odor touched her nose, and she inhaled lightly, waiting for the scenario to start. The smell was familiar, but not one she had smelled previously in this room; it was kept scrupulously clean, and this detail made a needle of unease penetrate Xandrei’s thoughts. The goggles were still dark, the room still muffled, but something told her that the parameters of the exercise had been changed without her knowledge.

Relaxing her body, she bent her knees slightly, flexing them comfortably. Then she stilled and listened. At first, she heard nothing. Silence, and her own breathing very faintly. She held her breath a second longer, and then exhaled, and this time – she heard it. Someone else was breathing, very quietly, trying to sync their own inhalations to hers so that she would not hear them. The acrid scent abruptly registered in her mind; it was the scent of blood mingled with cleaning solution. Xandrei remembered it from ‘incidents’ in the exercise yards, when prospective young intelligence agents would spar with each other and the custodians would clean up the blood from split lips, bloody noses, and bitten tongues with a sharp smelling cleanser.

Changing her grip on the hilt of her blade, Xandrei tilted her head slightly. There. He or she was slightly to her left. She turned slowly with pretended clumsiness to the right, as if she were trying to figure out what was going on. But as she continued to turn, her head moving up, down, then shaking briefly in a false mummery of trying to force her goggles to start to work, Xandrei lunged, the blade sweeping towards the tiny sound she’d heard.

Fabric tore on the tip of her knife, and she heard the hiss of an indrawn breath. That was the only sign that she’d found a mark with her blade, and it was not a reassuring one. Another student probably would have cursed, jumped back, possibly even laughed at being discovered. But whomever was in the room with her had merely evaded it as best as they could, without moving enough to give away their position entirely. She had no doubt they were mobile now, and she was hobbled by the earpieces and knew better than to try to remove them on pain of retaliation from the instructors. They were going to see if she could survive an unexpected situation, and Xandrei meant to show them that she could. But she couldn’t help wondering if the person who had gone into the room before her had lived or died, and which of her fellow students it had been.

The answering strike, when it came, was absolutely silent. The attacker’s knife cut across her upper arm, barely breaking the skin. It hurt, as it had been intended to do, but was also obviously intended to show her that her opponent was far more skilled than she.

Not that Xandrei had doubted that from the moment she’d realized that this was not going to be a typical training session.

She heard the slide of a foot on the mats, and twisted away from it, bringing her blade up to guard. The attacker’s blade did not contact hers, but it also failed to cut her. She continued the motion, stepping into the direction of the attack, her blade sweeping down and across. Feet whispered away, gliding to her right, and she turned to follow it. Her knife flashed out, a hooked attack that touched nothing but was repaid with another shallow slice across the top of her right thigh. Flinching away, Xandrei resisted the urge to put her hand over the cut. It would only make her fingers slippery.

Glide, thrust, parry. Spin, jab, cut. The assailant drew her out, making her show every defensive and aggressive move that she had learned over the last few weeks. When she was too slow, they cut her. When she was fast enough, she heard cloth tear, and once even smelled blood that possibly wasn’t her own. The moment she began to feel like she was merely being tested for aptitude, though, the enemy changed their tactics.

Her leg was swept out from under her body, and she hit the floor with a grunt, her shield generator snapping loose and tumbling away into the corner. Rolling her weight back onto her shoulders, back curving, she flipped back up onto her feet, the sharp motion making the cuts across her legs deepen and throb painfully. The next attack was a punch to her lower back that cramped her fatigued muscles agonizingly. Stumbling away, she hit the wall with her left shoulder, and twisted her head back towards the open room, listening frantically. 

The heavy fist that hit her in the stomach folded her up like a paper fan, and she crumpled, wheezing in pain. Some part of her expected the boot that struck her with near exquisite precision in exactly the same spot the fist had just hammered, and she gagged, coughing up some blood from the tongue she’d bitten hard on her way down.

 _Get up, get up, get up, GET UP!_ Her mind screamed. But she lay there, choking, and then slowly started to get to hands and knees, one arm tucked under herself as if to defend her tender belly. She heard the susurration of air, and twisted towards it, ignoring the pain that stabbed through her at the sudden motion. She seized the boot and violently wrenched it, rewarded by a deep, masculine grunt of discomfort and the thud of a heavy body on the mats. Xandrei flung herself onto him, and he seized her by the waist, tossing her away from him hard enough to make her skid across the floor and strike the padded wall.

She was up in an instant, and this time, her knife found purchase in the meat of the body that she heard scrambling to his feet in the center of the room, before he could conceal himself in silence again. A fist struck the side of her head, and then the stiff flat of his hand racked her throat so hard that she felt vomit burn her throat and tongue, but Xandrei fiercely swarmed up his tall form like a murderous monkey-lizard, her knife jamming into his chest at the juncture of the shoulder. This time, he cried out in pain, and she twisted the dagger as best as she could, hearing it grind against bone. When he struck her again, the violent, frustrated blow snapped her head around, her jaw popping loudly. She went limp as the punch knocked her aside, and hit the mat several feet away, unconscious. 

“She’s awake, sir.”

Grey eyes blinked uncertainly, watering in the light of the room. The instructor who had originally told her to put the goggles on outside the practice room was standing next to her medical bed, and Xandrei regarded the tall, solemn woman owlishly. Her jaw ached, swollen and throbbing dully in tandem with her abused stomach and sprained ankle. The coolness of kolto on skin marked each slice from the stranger’s knife, and those at least felt as if they would not give her too much trouble.

“Sloppy defensive work. I expect to see better, next time.”

“Yes, sir, of course.” There was rarely a need for differentiation in address between male instructors and female instructors, and this one was no exception to that efficient rule, giving a curt, expectant nod in response to Xandrei’s measured tone. “Will the next session be similar?”

“You want to know if it will be a surprise? Of course. We learn nothing from it if you’re prepared, trainee.” The instructor arched one finely shaped brow over her dark eyes, and withdrew from the room. “Two days rest, then back to training. We expect improvement.”

“Yes sir.”

Trainee. She’d passed.

Next time, she’d be ready.

**Author's Note:**

> (Absolutely no schedule in mind for updating. It'll happen when it happens. ;) )


End file.
